Author Archive
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March 8th, 2010
Colliding gold creates new matter
A never-before seen particle, called an anti-hypertriton, has been created for the first time during experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island, New York. Particles of gold were collided just short of the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) and more than 100 million collisions were made to collect the data. The matter created during the experiments is believed to have been in existence immediately after the creation of the universe – the so-called “Big Bang”.
Unfortunately, we’re a bit short of particles physicists here at the WGC, so if you’d like to read more the work is available here as a science advanced online publication.
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March 5th, 2010
Video perspectives
The American Chemical Society’s journal Physical Chemistry Letters has a nice series of video perspectives on papers it has recently published. This one, for example, features reseachers from Jin Zhong Zhang’s lab at CalTech speaking about their article Biomedical Applications of Shape-Controlled Plasmonic Nanostructures: A Case Study of Hollow Gold Nanospheres for Photothermal Ablation Therapy of Cancer.
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March 3rd, 2010
Anticancer gold complexes
The current issue of Chemistry – A European Journal leads with a nice paper entitled ”Stable Anticancer Gold(III)-Porphyrin Complexes: Effects of Porphyrin Structure”. Gold complexes have long been investigated as potential treatments of a variety of ailments, and this paper represents some of the very latest research in the field. A full abstract can be found here. -
February 26th, 2010
Nanosphere in the MIT Technology Review
The Technology Review, published by MIT, is a great source of information on new innovations in a range of fields including energy, materials and medicine. In the latest issue Nanosphere, the US-based diagnostics company, features on a couple of occasions. Firstly, the company has been selected by the review as one of the world’s most innovative companies in their TR50 award. This is a significant award, placing Nanosphere in the company of various corporate giants such as DuPont, GlaxoSmithKline, Google & Apple. Their gold-based technology, called the Verigene system, has also been highlighted with a nice breakdown of the components.
Congratulations to Nanosphere on this notable award
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February 24th, 2010
A new gold centre of excellence?
On the way back to London from the Nano Tech 2010 event in Tokyo I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of days in the city of Yantai, which is situated in Shandong Province, China. Back in 2008 the World Gold Council supported the work of Caixia Qi, a professor of chemistry at the local university, for her exciting work in the field of gold catalysis. Her group is making great progress in identifying stable, highly effective gold catalysts for a range of applications based around the oxidation of carbon monoxide.The region is steeped in gold, quite literally. The area is dotted with gold mines, and is home to some of China’s largest gold mining companies. Everywhere you look the chinese symbol for gold (shown above) is prominent – it really is quite something.
During my brief stay, I met the president of the Yantai Gold Bureau and senior representatives of both the Shandong Zhaojin group (one of the largest gold mining companies in China) and Yantai University. The purpose of these meetings was to discuss the potential of forming a centre of excellence at Yantai University for research into new scientific and technological uses of gold. It transpired that all parties were fully supportive of the venture, including local government, meaning the centre will proceed under Professor Qi’s stewardship at the university.
This is a most exciting venture, bringing together considerable resource and expertise in the field. Here at the WGC we applaud the hard work and tenacity of Professor Qi in bringing the centre of excellence ever closer to fruition, and look forward to building on our already strong relationship in the future.
Update, 25th Feb 2010. Below is a picture of our delegation visiting the fantastic local gold musuem, where we all were able to pick up a 12.5kg bar of pure gold!
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February 17th, 2010
NanoComposix – innovating solutions
Regular readers have probably worked out by now that we love to see gold being used in innovative and useful ways. The San Diego-based outfit NanoComposix are achieving just this, with a number of exciting R&D programmes running alongside their core business of supplying high specification nanoparticles to industry.
The company’s R&D programme is particularly robust, with a number of different projects currently ongoing. One which caught my eye was the use of gold nanoparticle matrices for MALDI-MS tissue imaging. This work has the potential to enhance the detection, identification, and analysis of small biomolecules directly from tissue surfaces.
If anyone reading wants to get in touch with the company feel free to contact me, or go to them directly.
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February 12th, 2010
Gold for good – a new article from the WGC
Yesterday we released a new publication written by the World Gold Council and Cientifica called ‘Gold for good – gold and nanotechnology in the age of innovation’. The article, which is freely available on both the WGC and Cientifica websites, discusses the past, present and future of gold-based nanotechnology, focusing on key areas in medicine, the environment and technology.I am attending the 2010 Nanotech Japan event in Tokyo next week where I will be launching the article, and will follow this with a trip to the ACS spring meeting in California towards the end of March. Feel free to drop me a line if you are attending either event, I’d be happy to discuss any aspect of the WGCs activities, including our funding and investment programmes.
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February 8th, 2010
Gold nanoparticles and theranostics
Theranostics is a term which many of you may not be familiar with, but it describes much sought after combinations of diagnostic and therapeutic processes. Traditionally, diagnostics and therapeutics are quite separate – if you are feeling unwell, you will visit your GP who will diagnose your illness (with a blood test, for example) and then prescribe the relevant treatment. Combining these two activities offers considerable benefits – speed of treatment, improved patient management/compliance and cost. Examples of theranostics currently on the market include Genentech’s Herceptin and Novartis’ Gleevec.
With this in mind I was fascinated to read this paper, recently published in the journal Nanotechnology. The team, working in the US and Europe, report the development of so-called ‘plasmonic nanobubbles’ (PNBs). These PNBs are effectively tunable and transient probes based around gold nanoparticles. The authors describe how such nanobubbles may potentially be used in 1) non-invasive imaging , 2) controlled-release, intra-cellular delivery and 3) selective and guided cell and tissue damage – true ‘theranostic’ potential!
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February 1st, 2010
Heart of gold?
The University of South Carolina has just released a fascinating press release detailing three of their researchers work investigating how injections of nano-sized rods of gold might improve the function of faulty heart valves while eliminating the need for corrective surgery. The work, which has been supported by a two-year exploratory grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, focuses on on the structural protein collagen. The amount of collagen within heart valves alters their mechnical properties – for example too much collagen leads to the valves becoming stiff and not functioning correctly. The team believe that the gold nanoparticles can alter the mechanical properties of the collagen in beneficial ways, and we will watch the outcome of their work with interest.
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January 27th, 2010
Nanopartz expansion
Nanopartz, the US-based company who specialise in the production and supply of gold nanoparticles, are planning on expanding their operations and staff headcount significantly over the next 5 years having recently moved into new purpose-built facilities in Loveland, CO. I was fortunate enough to have a tour of the new labs at the end of last year, and was impressed by the facilities which incorporate both new R&D labs and a large production area.
We’ve blogged before about some of the great products Nanopartz have developed – take a look at their catalogue for a full list.
Trevor Keel
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